Jeff Bezos. Photo credit: Dan Farber on Flickr, under Creative Commons license

The House Judiciary Committee of the United States has announced that it has summoned Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for a testimony after a recent report from the Wall Street Journal implied that Amazon employees made use of data harvested on independent third-party sellers on its platform to launch competing products, contrary to previous assertions from the e-commerce giant that it didn’t engage in such practice. In a sworn testimony before the U.S. Antitrust Subcommittee in July of last year, Amazon’s associate general counsel, Nate Sutton, denied that the company made use of data from third-party sellers to launch competing products.

“If the reporting in the Wall Street Journal article is accurate, then statements Amazon made to the Committee about the company’s business practices appear to be misleading, and possibly criminally false or perjurious.” the summons letter sent to Jeff Bezos stated.

“In light of our ongoing investigation, recent public reporting, and Amazon’s prior testimony before the Committee, we expect you, as Chief Executive Officer of Amazon, to testify before the Committee. It is vital to the Committee, as part of its critical work investigating and understanding competition issues in the digital market, that Amazon respond to these and other critical questions concerning competition issues in digital markets.” the letter read.

Bezos has been summoned but on a voluntary basis, meaning he reserves the right to choose not to attend. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee, however, notes that it reserves “the right to resort to compulsory process if necessary.”